OPERA America draws on resources and expertise from within and beyond the opera field to advance a mutually beneficial agenda that serves and strengthens the field through programs in the following categories:

Creation: Artistic services that help artists and companies increase the creativity and excellence of opera productions, especially North American works;

Presentation: Opera company services that address the specific needs of staff, trustees and volunteers;

Enjoyment: Education, audience development and community services that increase all forms of opera appreciation.

New York City is home to the nation’s largest concentration of performing and creative artists, professional training institutions and music businesses. A majority of OPERA America’s Professional Company Members hold or attend auditions in New York City annually, and opera leaders from Europe and around the world are regular visitors.

In response to the pressing need for appropriate space in New York by members who suffered from the lack of good audition and work facilities in the city, OPERA America created the National Opera Center. The Opera Center serves many functions that support the artistic and economic vitality of the field by providing its constituents with a range and level of services never before possible.

OPERA America serves the entire opera field through research, publications and services. We work daily to facilitate the creation, performance and enjoyment of opera throughout North America. Much of what we do is made possible through generous contributions from opera lovers like you.

Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and music critic. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri and was a prodigious child, later studying the piano work of Erik Satie at Harvard. After studying for a year in Paris on a fellowship he returned to the city from 1925 – 1940 where he became friends with many prominent figures including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, e.e. cummings, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Orson Welles, and others. He studied with Nadia Boulanger. After publishing his book The State of Music he lived in New York working as a critic and composer for theatre and film. He became a mentor to a new generation of tonal composers including Ned Rorem, Paul Bowles, and Leonard Bernstein though pointedly ignored female composers. He received many awards during his life and was known as a modernist and neoclassical composer.

Set in the United States of America in the 19th century without too much restriction as to decade (ca. 1870).

Epilogue: some years later in the Halls of Congress, Washington, DC. Story of Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), who pioneered political rights for American women. The opera is in pageant form. Some of the characters are historical, others imaginary. All are shown, through poetic license, as associated or acquainted with the heroine, whether or not they existed in the same period. The opera traces Anthony's career from her initial struggles to her final victory; Other historical characters that appear include: U.S. Grant, Daniel Webster, and Andrew Jackson (also two characters identified as Virgil T. and Gertrude S.)

The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg, 1-29-67; The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg, 4-1-64; The New York Times, Donal Henahan, 8-2-71; The New York Times, Allen Hughes, 11-10-71; The New York Times, Hughes, 11-28-71; The New York Times, Hughes, 7-3-72; The New York Times, Clive Barnes, 11-27-72; Time, 8-23-76; The New York Times, Shirley Fleming, 7-18-76; The New Yorker, 12-15-86; High Fidelity, January, 1977; The New York Times, Peter Davis, 2-13-77; Stereo Review, June 1977; High Fidelity, Conrad L. Osborne, July 1977; The New York Times, John J. O'Connor, 7-5-77; The New Yorker, Alan Rich, 6-20, 1977; The New York Times, John Rockwell, 10-3-82; The New York Times, John Gruen, 3-13-83; Los Angeles Times, Albert Goldberg, 5-15-65; Opera, 12-76, p. 1138; Musical America, 12-76, p.21; Opera, 7-83, p. 744.

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